Delcam's PowerMILL helps maximise return on machine tool investment

Adding Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM software helped specialist electronics company Magneton to maximise the return on its investment in two Sodick high-speed machining centres at its St. Petersburg site. The new facilities have enabled the company to undertake an increased number of projects, including export work for new customers in the USA and Finland, as well as new orders from its Russian clients.

"Advanced machine tools demand effective programming,” explained the plant’s General Director, Anatoly Firsenkov. "Poor efficiency at this stage can bring to nothing all the capabilities of the most potent machining equipment. It was clear that, with acquisition of our new machine tools, there was a necessity to invest in new software as well. After a series of evaluations, we bought PowerMILL from Delcam’s St. Petersburg office. This allows fast and effective programming of high-speed milling, even for complex components. These capabilities were absent in most of the other software we tried.”

"As well as having a wider range of strategies,” he added, "PowerMILL offers an almost inexhaustible range of editing options. These make it possible to compare quickly a number of machining techniques for a given part and to select most efficient for running time, for achieving the required accuracy and smoothness, and so forth. All the programming schemes can also be tested in the program’s simulation software and, if necessary, refined further.”

PowerMILL’s flexibility was another important benefit. "We can accept models from any of the CAD systems used by our customers to design their parts,” commented Mr. Firsenkov. "Similarly, PowerMILL includes post-processors for all the older machine tools we use along with our new high-speed equipment. This is important for Russian companies, which tend to have a wide range of machines.”